TTIMW: The good, bad and ugly (pt. 3)

So far I’ve shared two summer projects, one good and one pretty bad. Today, I’m covering The Ugly.

The Ugly

“I told you it was getting bad, but you didn’t listen to me.”

When you hear these words, it’s already too late to impress your wife. But in retrospect I wish that her disappointment was the worst of what I’d have to deal with when I finally took notice of how badly plugged the kitchen sink was. When we’d run the dishwasher, the sink would fill up to the point where we had to scoop water out in a bucket. Then water would leak from the piping. We just started leaving a casserole dish under the pipe to catch it.

Drano, plunger and repeat provided temporary fixes but didn’t solve the problem. This went on for about a month – things were bad but the sink was usable. In the meantime, I searched and watched videos, learnt words like flange and P-trap and figured out how to replace the kitchen sink strainer, said flange and tail piece. Turns out it required two people for that job though and my wife, sceptical that this would even fix the problem, had to wade in. To my surprise, soon we were shouting and screaming – I think it started when we swapped jobs and she was under the sink while I was trying to hold the strainer in place. (All was calm almost as soon as we finished the job). But she was right, it didn’t fix the problem and soon our sink was full of water again.

I even got help from my boss (seriously), who helped me replace the P-trap and fished out a drinking straw (circa the ’90s, quite possibly) and some other gunk and helped install a new faucet (the old one was busted). But this didn’t fix our problems.

I bought a handheld auger/drain snake from Home Depot and fished out foul smelling things. With hope I turned on the tap. The sink just started to fill, reflecting my face full of disappointment.

Want to know what fixed it? Waking up to find the sink still full of Drano-filled water. Sometimes, you just have to call the plumber and pay through your nose. Yes, the water in the sink was replaced by water from my tears, when in 15 minutes they turned on their industrial, electric auger and fetched out ancient gunk – which must have been passed down from generation to generation – right out of the stack itself.

Next time, I’d rent that same auger for a fraction of the price and do it myself. But hopefully there won’t be a next time.

There will be another post soon though. Aug. 7 is my wife’s birthday and I have half a plan to impress her. Check back to see how it goes. And as always, feel free to comment below with your DIY disasters or uplifting/demoralizing stories of how you try to impress your significant other or how your significant other tried to impress you.